


Not a Goodbye

by Kantayra of Yore (Kantayra)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-01
Updated: 2003-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 00:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra%20of%20Yore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-'Chosen'. Buffy reflects upon Spike's absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Goodbye

I often think about him, you know.

On those nights where I lie alone in bed, not quite eager for sleep to take me yet. Oddly enough, it’s this time in particular that reminds me of him. I slept in his arms…what? Only a few times. But it came to feel like habit, like something that I could depend on. I was unsure and yet so contented at the same time. Such a contradiction… And that was practically the definition of Spike.

I always thought about death as this horribly tragic event. I think back on Jenny Calendar and Angel and my mom and Tara…even myself, and I see pain and anguish. Those times were characterized by blinding grief – the kind where you cried your eyes out and then cried some more just for good measure. It wasn’t always me that bore the brunt of the loss, but I could still feel it in others like a palpable, draining force.

But it didn’t hurt when Spike died.

This was infinitely more confusing than blinding grief ever would have been. I took is as evidence for a while that he was right, that I didn’t love him. It just made me feel horrible, but not horrible in the way I wanted. Because Spike was a good man, and he really deserved to have someone mourn his death. I know that he showered my grave with tears.

But then I came to realize something. It isn’t because I’m heartless or even that I don’t love him that his death didn’t hit me like the others. It was because he was different, because he was Spike. He was ready to die, and he was content and he loved me. I honestly don’t think he would want tears. (Well, maybe a few just for show. He always did have this soft spot for emotional airs.) But it was never his wish to bring me pain or grief. He gave me love and strength instead, and that’s what he’s still doing now. That’s why the only tears I’ve shed have been one or two at random intervals in fond remembrance.

Like, just the other day, we were all sitting together and talking, and Xander and I made all these comments that I knew were idiotic, and I just expected some snarky comment to come from the vampire that was always hovering in the background. My eyes teared up at the complete void that followed my music snafu, and Xander kind of caught my eye, and he had the same tears. Because Anya really wouldn’t have let his own joking get away without some comment about money or orgasms. Xander didn’t ever understand Spike, and I never understood Anya, but we both got that moment. We were both proud of how they’d gone out. In the end, they’d both overcome their demons. So, it wasn’t that they had died that made us sad, it was just the little things, the little voids that they had filled that are now empty spaces.

And, god, Spike never would have let that last comment go without some suggestive remark and that sexy little leer of his.

Because that’s what really gets to me at nights. It’s not that Spike isn’t here and that I can’t hold him. It’s that Spike isn’t anywhere. There is no more Spike. Those words just feel so wrong. That something as annoyingly (wonderfully) persistent as Spike is finally just completely gone from this world… It’s like I’ve just detected a fundamental flaw in the universe itself. This world definitely needs a Spike to make it work, and suddenly there isn’t one. A light has gone out, and nothing will ever be able to take its place, and…

See, this is where I really need Spike. It was always at times like this, when I got caught up in my internal brooding just a little too much, that he would say something so completely outrageous that I just had to smile. It was just this little thing he did that no one else has ever been able to do. Angel always made me smile on just the day to day stuff – patrolling, school, the petty problems of the moment. And Xander always makes me smile when impending disaster’s going to strike; there’s no one better to have by your side before an apocalypse. But Spike… Spike was the one that made me laugh when the demons were inside of me, and…

 _“If you want a demon inside of you right now, luv, I’d be happy to oblige…”_

I can almost hear his suggestive voice in my head, and I laugh. That’s exactly the sort of thing he would say to make everything seem better. It would probably turn me from melacholy to “brassed off,” but he would always bring me back to my strengths. So perfectly, oddly Spike. God, I miss him…

He said that I don’t love him. In a way, he was right. I don’t love him the way he loves me in a ‘this is it’ sort of way. I’m not ready to find ‘it’ yet. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love him. I love the way he can always make me smile when things are the most dire, and I love the way he looks right into my eyes and gives me that shy, vulnerable little smile, and I love the seductive sexuality that rests so easily on his shoulders and…er, other parts, and I love when he goes off on those enthusiastic rants of his, and I love the way he smirks and the way he cocks his head to one side and the bleach and the leather that he uses as armor against the world and…

I love _him_. Not in the way he loved me and not in some kind of platonic sense, but in some odd way that’s uniquely Spike. It’s like I had to come up with a new way to love just to find the right place for him in my heart.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have pressed this harder in those moments right before the end. A last quick brush of our lips, or…

No, that would have felt too much like a goodbye.

And, strangely, despite the huge, gaping crater that now stands as a memorial to my lover’s last moments, I don’t feel like we’ve said goodbye yet. Even at our worst – god, was it when we were killing each other or kissing each other? – there was always this bond. I hated him for so long, but something always drew us back together. There was just something…

I didn’t lie to Angel. I’m not ready to declare my undying love to anyone yet. But when I allow myself to think forward…

I see so many possibilities. There are so many choices, so many realities, and they don’t scare me. I smile at them because I know that, whatever happens, it’s going to turn out all right. And right in there with the rest of them is the image of me in Spike’s arms once more, and I honestly don’t believe it’s wishful thinking. There’s a connection between us – a bond – and, more than I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life, I’m sure we’re destined to cross paths once more. I don’t know if it will be in this life or in another – I’ve never exactly been good with the philosophy – but Spike and I aren’t over.

We may never be truly together, but there will always be…something. This little part of me that’s now reserved solely for Spike, just like that place I have for Angel. The same but different, and above all, always there and never fading.

I close my eyes and think back upon his last moments with no regret. Did he laugh in the face of the end? I’m confident he did. He wasn’t afraid. Hell, he’d always hated Sunnydale. I bet he’s laughing right now that he was finally the one that got to blow it sky-high. Don’t think that I didn’t catch that last little joke of his, either. He just had to knock that ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign down once last time, didn’t he? Just a little way of letting me know that even after the explosion, he was still there.

I know the Hellmouth’s gone. I know I’m free of the Chosen path now. But…

There’s this quote I’ve heard Giles and Willow spout off from time to time. “Nature abhors a vacuum.” And that was what was left when Spike died. There was so much I didn’t understand in those last moments, so much that confused me, but…

Somehow, despite the merciless logic of the universe itself, he will find me again. He’s too persistent to let anything as trivial as death stop him.

I don’t know what I’ll do in the future. If Spike suddenly dropped into my arms right now, would I love him? The best answer I can give is maybe. But when it comes time, when I find out who I really am and I’m ready… I have no doubt whatsoever that Spike will somehow find a way to be there. He won’t give up on me this easily. One day, when I least expect it, he’ll suddenly barge back into my life, make a general nuisance or himself, and remind me all over again why I love him. As persistently as any force of nature.

So I’m not sad.

He’s always the one who comes back to me.

Which was why it wasn’t a goodbye.


End file.
